Annals of Government Medicine

Hundreds of people die or suffer serious disability unnecessarily every year because they suffer a stroke at a weekend when NHS care is poorer, a major study has found….

A team from Imperial College London and the National Audit Office has found 350 people die within seven days of their stroke unnecessarily because they were admitted at the weekend and a further 650 suffer serious disability. …

Dr Tony Rudd, a stroke consultant at Guy’s and St Thomas’s in London, and spokesman for the Royal College of Physicians, said: “It’s unacceptable for the NHS to be operating as if people only get ill between Monday and Friday, from nine ‘til five.”

The so-called ‘weekend effect’ was more pronounced in patients aged under 44 who were 60 per cent more likely to die after being admitted at the weekend compared with people aged over 85.